.getTime() Alternative without milliseconds

Question

Is there a way to use the Date().getTime() function without getting the time in milliseconds? If not is there a substitute for .getTime() which will only give me the precision in minutes?

Also I'm not sure how to just strip the milliseconds out of the date object.

var time = new Date().getTime()

Output: 1426515375925

Answer 1

Simple arithmetic. If you want the value in seconds, divide the milliseconds result by 1000:

var seconds = new Date().getTime() / 1000;

You might want to call Math.floor() on that to remove any decimals though:

var seconds = Math.floor(new Date().getTime() / 1000);

Is there a different function I can use that will give me only the minutes since 1/1/1970, I just dont want the number to be as precise.

Certainly, divide the seconds by 60, or divide the milliseconds by 60000:

var minutes = Math.floor(new Date().getTime() / 60000);

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var milliseconds = 1426515375925,
    seconds = Math.floor(milliseconds / 1000),  // 1426515375
    minutes = Math.floor(milliseconds / 60000); // 23775256